Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Ruth Connell - Supernatural

Fans of long-running cult American
fantasy series Supernatural will have spotted a new arrival in its
tenth season, currently airing on E4 in the UK. The red-haired woman
called Rowena may not have said anything during her first appearance
sitting in her hotel room at the end of the episode, Soul Survivor,
which aired last month. The two men hanging from the ceiling above
her impaled by stakes, however, spoke volumes about her demonic
intent.

As fans of the show will find out when
Rowena makes her presence fully felt in the season's eighth episode,
Girls, Girls, Girls, on November 25th, what turns out to
be a 400 year old matriarch with some very important progeny also
speaks with a Falkirk accent. This comes in the form of thirty-six
year old actress Ruth Connell, who was last seen on these shores
playing Mrs Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the
Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh back in 2008, but who now seems to
have entered an even more fantastical realm.

“Rowena is this powerful witch trying
to reclaim her power-base,” Connell says on a break from filming
the eleventh series of Supernatural in her first UK newspaper
interview since she first appeared on American screens a year ago.
“She turns up and creates havoc, and gets caught and tortured, but
she's not just a baddie or nasty for the sake of it. There's humour
there, and I can be playful with Rowena., especially after a manager
I had a couple of years ago told me that I looked like I probably
should play a witch.”

Connell's career was marked out from
when she was a child growing up on her parents farm in Bonnybridge,
when, having been packed off to accompany her younger cousin to dance
classes, Connell found a natural aptitude for it. She appeared as
Clara in Scottish Ballet's production of The Nutcracker, and danced
in pantomime before studying drama in London.

Connell toured in a production of Ena
Lamont Stewart's play, Men Should Weep, played Helen of Troy in Faust
at the Royal Lyceum, and appeared in Alex Norton's production of No
Mean City at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.

Once she moved to America, it was
Connell's voice which initially paid dividends when she was picked to
be voice match for Merida, the flame-haired princes played by Kelly
Macdonald in Disney Pixar's animated feature, Brave. With
Supernatural, however, it is Connell solely in the spotlight.

“It's honestly been one of the best
years of my life,” she says. “Eighteen months ago I couldn't get
an audition, and now here I am, this girl from a farm in Bonnybridge
on network American TV and going to fan conventions all over the
world.”

One of these brought her back to the UK
for an event called Asylum, held at the National Exhibition Centre in
Birmingham.

“I really was pinching myself,”
says Connell, “because six or seven years earlier I'd done a
convention when I was working for a PR company, and now here I was
signing autographs in the same room I'd helped set up.”

Given that Supernatural is known for
killing off its characters in the goriest of ways, both Connell and
Rowena's future with the programme is far from certain. While Connell
won't be drawn on how things pan out, the fact that Rowena is known
to fans to become integral to future plots suggests she'll be
haunting our screens a while yet.

“She's involved in quite a pivotal
way,” Connell teases. “especially in the finale. Rowena's a lot
of fun to play. It's definitely the most fun I've ever had in an
evening gown.”

Despite such high profile exposure,
Connell expresses a desire to work more in Scotland, particularly
onstage with the likes of the National Theatre of Scotland and the
Royal Lyceum. Filming prevented her taking up an invitation to appear
in a scene that formed part of the latter theatre's recent fiftieth
anniversary celebrations, though a couple of years ago Scotland came
to America when Connell was asked to be voice coach on a production
of Linda McLean's play, Sex and God.

“That was one of the best things that
happened to me before Supernatural,” she says. “I'd admired
Linda's work for years, and suddenly I'm sitting next to her in a
little black box theatre in L.A. But it would be great to do
something like that back home as well, and why not? I've a house in
London, a family in Scotland, I'm filming in Vancouver and I'm living
in L.A, so I don't see why I can't combine all that with working in
Scotland as well.”

About Me

Coffee-Table Notes is the online archive of Neil Cooper. Neil is an arts writer and critic based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Neil currently writes for The Herald, Product, The Quietus, Scottish Art News, Bella Caledonia and The List. He has contributed chapters to The Suspect Culture Book (Oberon), Dear Green Sounds: Glasgow's Music Through Time and Buildings (Waverley) and Scotland 2021 (Eklesia), and co-edited a special Arts and Human Rights edition of the Journal of Arts & Communities (Intellect). Neil has written for Map. Line, The Wire, Plan B, The Arts Journal, The Times, The Independent, Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman, Sunday Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Sunday Times (Scotland), Scottish Daily Mail, Edinburgh Evening News, Is This Music? and Time Out Edinburgh Guide. Neil has written essays for Suspect Culture theatre company, Alt. Gallery, Newcastle, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Berwick upon Tweed Film and Media Arts Festival and Ortonandon. Neil has appeared on BBC and independent radio and TV, has provided programme essays for John Good and Co, and has lectured in arts journalism at Napier University, Edinburgh.